


Stories of the Second Self: The Way You Witch Me

by John_Steiner



Series: Alter Idem [68]
Category: Urban Fantasy - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:29:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22553293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: Kelly needed to get Dominique off his mind after the breakup. Over time, however, physical changes were happening to Kelly, while stories circulated around Cincinnati about strange sightings. Then, Kelly's friend comes over to take Kelly to a party, where he sees Dominique talking to her friends about magic. Starting to think she cursed him, Kelly's keener sense revealed to him that another man took the kind of interest in her that Kelly knew wasn't right. Overcome with a protectiveness he couldn't explain, Kelly steps up and the full force transformation overwhelms him. Surely Dominique had cursed him in some way.
Series: Alter Idem [68]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813





	Stories of the Second Self: The Way You Witch Me

"Fine!" she had shouted.

"Fine!" Kelly echoed, before he stormed off.

It wasn't working out between him and Dominique for several months. She was really set on that vacation but Kelly didn't have that kind of money and neither did Dominique. The difference is, Kelly wasn't willing to risk his already crap financial situation to pay for a trip to Honolulu, not that he was particularly interested in going.

"What is it that made everyone want to vacation in Hawaii anyway?" Kelly had mumbled when he walked back to his car.

That wasn't the only reason things fell apart between them, however Kelly wasn't in the mood to examine everything else. Instead, he just went home and fumed while watching TV. Over the course of a month his sleep was poisoned with dreams of still being with Dominique, but otherwise Kelly went on with his job at the garage.

It was near the end of that month that Kelly started to notice the hair growing from the sides and back of his neck. He had been feeling short tempered and feverishly warm for almost two weeks, and now this. These weren't random errant hairs, but a whole carpet growing the way his scalp hair did.

Kelly rubbed his fingertips over the bristly hair hardly a quarter inch long. It felt like the buzz cuts he used to get in high school, but stopped cutting so frequently after moving out of his parents' house. "Dad never had this going on."

It was a Friday, and he'd gotten off work, so Kelly put it out of his mind while he got ready to hang out with his friends. Jordan was going to be driving, so after Kelly was done he waited in the living room of his apartment. Kelly clicked on the TV and the nightly news was showing.

"Cincinnati PD are baffled by a case involving suspected arson," the anchor announced, "Two months after the institute fire, arson and bomb investigators are still trying to uncover a cause. The psychiatric institute fell under scrutiny when accusations were put forth of patients being sexually assaulted. However, lawyers representing the institute claim the charges were unfounded and made by disgruntled patients."

Jordan finally arrived, his stereo system booming, and Kelly turned off the TV before going out the door and locking it. Jordan's car also had Greg and Juan inside, and Juan got out to pull his seat forward. Kelly got into the back, and with Juan again inside Jordan peeled out of the complex's driveway.

"Heard you and Dominique broke up," Jordan called out over the music, looking at Kelly from his rear view mirror.

"I don't wanna get into it," Kelly grumbled.

"I's cool man," Jordan said, "Hey, there's a big party down by the river. We were thinking of hitting that, maybe hook up."

That brought a smile to Kelly's face. He'd gotten used to having a girl around, and so figured that after a month he was over Jordan enough that he could find someone else.

The car pulled up by a grassy field with irregular trails of bare and dried dirt. Trees were sparse around the field, but grew denser near the river shore, and still more dense on the other side. Tables, folding chairs, and blankets were laid out everywhere in the after-sunset party. There must've been hundreds of people.

Kelly, Jordan, Juan, and Greg strolled toward the crowd and each picked up red cups that had been laid out for everyone. It was a low grade alcohol mixed with Dr. Pepper, but better than beer so Kelly happily took a swig.

Between random meandering conversation and scoping the crowds for a good looking girl, Kelly noticed Dominique was here also. She didn't see him, and instead talked to her friends with her back to his general direction. He couldn't make out what she was saying, but her hands waved about enthusiastically. At one point she bent her knees to bounce with excitement.

"And it worked?" Kelly heard another girl say.

"I made my tropical plant grow!" Dominique's voice was loud enough for Kelly to hear over the music, and then she looked around as if checking for who might've heard before she resumed, "Magic is a thing! It's so cool. There's this website where people post spells they came up with, and I've been trying them out. You know that shop that just opened up on...."

Kelly's mind drifted from whatever else Dominique and her friends talked about, and he recalled the hair on his neck.

"Did 'ya hear me, Kelly?" Juan asked.

"Hmm?" Kelly snapped out of it and turned to see Juan and Greg expectantly waiting for an answer. "I didn't catch what you said."

"That story about this lady putting shit in guys drinks and making them do things," Juan seemed to repeat.

"I didn't hear about that," Kelly responded, unsure what the specifics were that they had been talking about.

"Yeah," Dominique said, "An' this ain't like slipping a mickey to someone. Shit's all kinds of fucked up, like a spell or something."

"Like in magic?" Kelly asked, and then turned to Dominique.

"Hey, is that your ex?" Juan asked, seeing where Kelly's attention was.

By now, some other guy was approaching her with an expression Kelly knew was one of interest. That was something else Kelly noticed over the last month.

It wasn't like he was hearing people's thoughts, but it felt like he sensed more details about them just by looking. Sometimes, he knew a personality type just from their cologne, perfume, or deodorant. In how they talked, Kelly detected whether they were being genuine or superficial.

"Who's that douche with her?" Greg asked.

"Don't care," Kelly dismissed with an absent wave, and realized he did indeed care.

Looking back again, Kelly immediately realized something about the guy. He hadn't opened his mouth yet, but Kelly knew the guy wasn't about to take no for an answer. From the way Dominique stood almost exactly perpendicular to him, Kelly got the sense she wasn't going to give him a yes.

Sure enough, the guy asked her, "Hey, after this party you wanna you and I someplace private?"

Kelly squinted at trying to make sense of what the guy intended to say, realizing he'd left out a few words. He wasn't sure if the dude was drunk and just that forgetful, or if something even more unseemly were his intent.

"No thank you," Dominique replied, with her hand out to casually stave him off.

Her gesture was one of forced politeness, but Kelly could tell from the guy's reaction that he felt she was being condescending. Kelly didn't know why he knew that, but it was practically like there was a sign on the guy's forehead about his feelings.

"C'mon," the flirting guy bid of Dominique. "This place blows. I can make your night a lot better."

"Geeze," Dominique's friend, Carrol exclaimed, "Take a hint!"

"I'm, uh, talking to this queen here," the guy laid on thick the cheese-for-charm, "I'm sure there's some loser here who'd love to loosen you up."

"Now it's fuck you!" Dominique shot, the side of her face going flush in an instant. "You don't talk to her that way!"

Kelly hadn't realized he was pacing toward the scene, until the guy noticed his approach, and put his arm toward Kelly while saying, "Hey chief, this don't concern you."

Chief, Kelly thought. Yeah, now he was fuckin' pissed. In this day and age people still threw around that racial slur, and that just made this prick even worse in Kelly's mind. "'Fuck is your problem?"

Dominique turned around, and Kelly could almost hear her roll her eyes. "Oh shit, Kelly!"

But he acted as if he didn't hear that, getting right in the other guy's face. "When a lady says no she fuckin' means it!"

"Since when did Tonto become a white knight?" the asshole asked of Dominique.

"Really, Kelly," she redirected, "I can take care of myself."

"While you're at it, you apologize to her right now," Kelly pointed off to Carrol.

"Found that loser for 'ya," the guy said to Carrol. "You can get your freak on in some gas station toilet stall."

Kelly shoved at the guy's chest, blowing off his feet to be flung more than six feet away. Kelly hadn't intended to push that hard, but he did toss tires at the garage for a few years.

The other guy reared up and spoiling for a fight. "Okay, bitch!"

"Kelly, stop it!" Dominique shouted. "I don't need you defending me. It's over."

At that, Kelly was sure he didn't want to get back with her, but he still felt he had to deal with this guy. With all this magic talk, did Dominique do something to him and was playing it off for others to hear?

No time to think about that, Kelly ducked back from a fist coming straight at his head. In the closeup he got of the other guy's knuckles, Kelly knew the dude had a soft life even if he had the build almost like a jock.

Kelly managed to catch the fist after it passed his face, and wrapped up the guy's elbow with his other arm. He'd forgotten how close Dominique was when he pulled the guy forward off balance, and then pivoted to force the dude to the ground. In a split second, Kelly pounded his fist into the back of the guy's head four times.

"Next time you call me Chief I'll beat your bitch-ass down more!" Kelly shouted, and voice developed a growl that lingered after his words.

"Jesus, Kelly!" Carrol shouted, "What's wrong with you?"

Strange gratitude, Kelly thought, as he looked up at Dominique and her friends with confusion. Dominique still had a face of not knowing why Kelly was doing this, and he saw then that she really wasn't feigning ignorance.

"You're sayin' you didn't bewitch me?" Kelly caught himself asking out loud.

"What?" Dominique's shock exploded in her voice. "You were listening in?"

"The fuckin' hair on my neck," Kelly made a motion to try grabbing at it, but the hair was too short to get a hold of with his whole hand. "An' all the other shit goin' on with me. That wasn't your doing?"

Dominique's face froze with embarrassment at the loud announcement of her magical practices. "You're crazy! I don't use it to play with people like that!"

Carrol leaned in toward Dominique to whisper, "How does he know?"

"You were just talking about it," Kelly said at normal volume.

More party goers had gathered at the commotion, and now Kelly felt embarrassed for drawing such an audience before announcing his belief that he fell victim to witchcraft.

"That's a spell for plants," Dominique hissed, and then looked around at the crowd. "Shit, Kelly! Don't do this to me!"

"Fucker, get off me," the guy's enraged but muffled complaint sounded.

Kelly practically forget his was atop the asshole, but his hold on the guy's arm remained iron firm. What disturbed Kelly was that his fingernails had retreated, and in their place claws started to emerged. His skin when from American Indian brown to lupine gray, and more body hair than a white guy was sprouting.

Dominique, Carrol, and everyone else backed away in horror. Without warning, pain pierced every bone in his body, and Kelly's back arced and his swung up, as his face contracted into an agonized snarl.

Cracking started that moment, and his muscles stretched like rope being snapped taunt. Something was stabbing just above the seat of his pants, and Kelly's shoes felt like torture devices binding down on his feet. Hardly able to see, Kelly grabbed at his shoes, and he heard the material tear under his teeth, before he realized he'd reached over and bit at them.

Kelly's hands went for the belt line of his jeans around back without his realizing, and next he was kicking off his pants. His t-shirt being more flimsy came off in shreds, though Kelly couldn't grasp why it took so long to slide what was left off his nose. By the time he shook off the last of his apparel, Kelly realized he was seeing a black canine nose at the end of his own face and that what felt like a shag carpet wrapped around his neck.

Again looking to his hand, Kelly saw two inch black claws from his fingers, but also thick pads and fur. His hand being more of a paw, Kelly turned it over before looking himself all over. By now, the asshole had scrambled away and as terrified as everyone else.

"What the hell are you?" Dominique screamed, her face contorted by fear and more than a passing amount of worry for him.

It was clear to Kelly now, that she didn't do this to him.


End file.
